Golden Sky, Silver Sea
by mentalyoga
Summary: In a time of shaky peace between the outer planets, can Larissa and Miranda overcome the obstacles to find one another, yet still fulfill their destinies?  A Silver Millennium epic centered on the Neptune & Uranus love story.


**Golden Sky, Silver Sea**  
_One: A Ball_  
-mentalyoga-

_(A/N: This is something that's been in the planning stages for quite a while, and never really made it out. Updates will probably be few and far between, since my focus right now is on my other epic, __**Ascension**__. But please do review, as I'm not quite certain where I'm going with this one just yet. Enjoy!)_

_ (07.31.07: I noticed in a couple of the reviews that there's some confusion about the Larissa/Miranda setup. They are, in fact, meant to be based on the Michiru/Haruka characters of the SM canon--I renamed them, of course, as I intend to note a clear difference between the Silver Millennium and present day--most of the names come either from astronomy or mythology, and outside of the actual Sailor Senshi, all other characters are of original design. Hope that clears a few things up...)  
_

* * *

"MOTHER! Larissa stole my pearls!" The shrill voice of her older sister tumbled down the corridors of the Neptunian palace and back up into Larissa's room, where at that exact moment, she was clasping the string at the base of her neck. She sighed and undid them again, quickly concealing them beneath the pack of lingerie tucked in her top drawer. Plastering an innocent veneer on, she took up her ivory comb and began running it through her flowing aqua mane. 

"Give them back!" Despina, her sniveling older sister, demanded, leaning precariously against the door frame with a smarmy sneer staining her thin lips. "I told mother, and she's on her way up right now to get them back. You'd save yourself a lot of trouble if you just handed them over."

"Is that a threat?" she asked quietly, not meeting Despina's crimson eyes.

"You bet your life it is, sis," came the boiling reply.

Larissa looked curiously over at her sister through the mirror's reflection. "I'm sorry, dear sister, I'm not sure what you're talking about," she murmured naively, still combing her hair. She ignored the sound of impending doom echoing up the stairs—the click-clack of her mother's heels against the polished marble floors.

Her sister's lanky frame was racked with furious shivers. "You most certainly do, Larissa. You asked to borrow them just this morning, and I said that you could—" she cut herself off, realizing her error.

"Borrow them? And now you're recanting?" Larissa set the comb down and swiveled her position on the chair to face her conniving sibling. "You know, Despina, you're a very wicked girl. Aren't you rather old to be playing those childish games now? Or is it just that you've nothing else to do, between your empty dance card and lonely bed?"

She looked the girl up and down, smirking with the knowledge that she had hit her sister's most vulnerable wound—that constant, cloying fear of growing old. Despina was, after all, three and twenty now, and had long since passed the acceptable grace period in which Neptunian girls were engaged or wed. And from the looks of it, the pain of that blow had taken its toll on her. She was beginning to show subtle age lines in the creases along her eyes and lips and her already thin frame was only getting thinner. And while Neptunian men valued petite women, they also valued gentle curves—neither of which Despina fit. She was far too tall—taller even than their very tall brother Triton—and had no chest or hips to speak of.

Larissa, on the other hand, was the ideal of feminine beauty in their growing kingdom. She was small, but not short; she was plump in all the right places; she had a flawless porcelain complexion and long sooty lashes and eyes that reflected back at whatever onlooker gazed at them the calmest day out on one of the many Neptunian seas. Her cerulean locks fell like gentle waves from that same sea down into the small of her back, and her sensuous lips seemed as inviting as the cool waters on the hottest days (which weren't all that hot to begin with, really). Frankly, she was as close to an ocean goddess as any of the women on Neptune got, and was the envy of every last one of them—Despina included.

"So you admit it, then, admit to stealing my pearls?" Despina had by now placed her fisted hands firmly on the crook of her shark waist, and their mother waited demurely behind for the answer.

"Mother," Larissa murmured diplomatically, "do come in. Despina and I, as you can see, were just having a little sibling dispute." Her mother sat on the loveseat behind Larissa's chair and crossed her ankles, placing her hands politely on her knees. "She seems to be entertaining some misguided notion that I misplaced her string of pearls."

Their mother—aptly named Oceania, as she was in her middle age and merely a gracefully aging reflection of her breathtaking daughter—cleared her throat in a way familiar to all five of her daughters and her only son…in a way that always managed to strike fear into the hearts of all six, before she began to speak.

"Now Larissa, as good an actress as you've become lately, don't think you can fool me with your silly facades. Pull the pearls out of your underwear; no one wants to wear jewelry that's been soiled in a pile of undergarments."

Larissa blushed and silently removed the aforementioned necklace. Her mother managed to have that effect on anyone she came into contact with—that subtle skill in making (her daughters especially) people feel inferior and crass, unrefined in her presence.

Despina grinned and grabbed them from Larissa's hands, cleverly scratching the younger girl in the process. "I knew it. You're a terrible liar, you know." She strutted, birdlike, out the door, and Larissa was left alone with the quiet glare of her mother.

"It won't happen again, mother," she apologized, and stood in the hope that her mother would follow suit.

"Sit down."

She sat.

"Stealing and lying aren't the suited hobbies a young woman in your position should be practicing, and these have become habits of yours lately. You're doing things that…well… normal girls your age seem to be doing." She opened her mouth to continue, but Larissa interrupted.

"But I'm not a normal girl, right mother?" As calming as her appearance and her demeanor could be, she was just as likely to crash into bouts of stormy tempers, and her mother had just touched a sore spot. "I'm not supposed to be 'one of them.' I'm above that, eh?" She stood once again, towering over her seated mother while somehow still looking firmly childish in the situation. "Well, I'm not, and I'm tired of you trying to make me fit this mold you have formed in your mind."

"—And that's what I'm talking about. Interrupting your elders is another thing to add to the list. And Larissa," she added, standing up and pinching her daughter's cheek lightly, "cut the cliché teen angst. It's unbecoming on a woman of your status."

And so she stood alone in her dressing room in the wake of her mother's subtle wrath. And no matter how much she tried to convince herself that her mother was in the wrong and that her angst was justifiable, somehow the words and the looks and the airs that her mother gave her stung deep. Maybe she had been poisoning Larissa with small quantities of disapproval since she was too young to approve of herself. Even now, those doubts liked to creep up, raining down upon the slim coats of confidence that had built up, like dust falling in unused crevices beneath shelves.

She glanced back at the mirror, pressing firm hands against her stomach, which still protruded slightly from the dinner she had finished only an hour or so ago, running fingertips along the pores of her cheeks, casting eyes down and away from the flaws she acknowledged, the flaws that others would not see.

"Primping again?" a deep voice audibly smiled behind her.

Rolling her eyes, she muttered a disdainful 'Triton' and turned. "What is it you want, you cad?"

Her brother laughed. "Don't throw around meaningless words, Lars; it makes you look naïve, and we both know you don't need anymore of that going around." She punched him softly on the shoulder, despite the fact that he towered above her. "Hey, don't bite off more than you can chew, buddy. I could step on you from way up here."

She pushed him out of the room and into the empty hall. "If you came here to badger me, Triton, you can go and join mother and Despina—they seem to be plotting some sort of terrible conspiracy against me today."

"Just today?" he grinned. "What happened?"

"The usual. Despina found some way to make me look despicable and mother gave me her routine lecture, you know…about how unfit I am to hold the position of princess, and how my life is on a downward spiral. That bullshit, again." She sighed. "God, this life is…boring. Is it always like this?"

Triton, only two years her senior, shrugged a pair of very broad shoulders. "How the hell would I know?" He brushed his hand through the thick mane of indigo hair atop his head and looked his sister in the eye. "If you really want my advice, just stay out of their way. I've gotten by easily enough that way. Every game they play now is petty enough, but it'll escalate, and you'll be miserable. And you know I don't want to see that." He ran a thumb over her cheek. "You're my favorite sister, you know."

"Well, with five of us, I imagine you have to do some kind of ranking system," she replied smugly. "If it counts for much, you're my favorite brother…"

"But there's only one brother for you to choose from…"

"Lucky you."

"Well, I came by to let you know they want us downstairs for that silly dinner they're throwing. So if you want to make a decent appearance, you better do it soon."

She watched him walk off, shutting the door as soon as he was out of sight. She would have to change before she went down; this was not just some 'silly' dinner—it was actually quite a significant event. Her parents—Oceania and Poseidon, queen and king of Neptune, respectively—had invited all the ruling families of the outer planets and their guests over for some peacekeeping gala.

And now Larissa would have to appear not only presentable, but perfect, in order to give off the image her mother wished to exude—that of a flawless, modest, and regal family worthy of the crown of Neptune. For if they were not perceived as such, their worthiness—and indeed, their positions of power—could be thrown into discord, and the wars could start up again.

The four planets of the outer solar system had been living a shaky peace for only a quarter of a century, since Poseidon had come to power in place of a series of weak and short-lived rulers. Neptune was no longer a planet to be easily pushed over, as before. A strong military ruler, and wise thinker, he took control of his kingdom and asserted its equality against the rest of the solar system. And when he married Oceania, a duke's refined daughter from the outskirts of the planet, he received class and high society into his court. And between her social snobbery and his absolutist control, they set up this gala with the intent to maintain the tentative calm they had spent twenty five years building.

Yet, it was Neptune and Uranus on the shakiest terms of the evening—Uranus had some rather nasty slavekeeping practices going on presently, and Poseidon—though certainly not a perfect man or ruler—let his ethics push upon his interplanetary relations. The rulers of Uranus, of course, found Poseidon's stances on many things rather wimpy, even in spite of his track record with absolute power, military control—and there was talk in town that there may be an attempted colonization. Of course, it was just peasant-talk, but Larissa listened to peasant talk with great fervor; unlike her mother, she had no pretensions of class hierarchy, and she realized of course that in her position of power, she was a very sheltered individual. Her father's eyebrows had been furrowed in worry for some weeks now, and he merely shrugged off her questions. Though all was in the stages of murmuring, rumors, and gossip, Larissa was well aware that everything was not as gleaming as it seemed.

She tugged on her best dress with the help of one of the handmaids—an insignificant twit whose name she couldn't ever remember—it was an extravagant affair, with teal coloring accentuating both the paler aquamarine of her hair and the dark navy of her eyes. With one strap resting on the back of her neck, the V-line cut fell just below the curve of her breasts, revealing ample cleavage (what would mother think of that? Or would it not matter, as it could distract all the big, bad men of the gala from the important matters at hand?) and widened at the hips, falling in pale green, blue, and white layers like waves down to the floor and swimming out slightly. A single slit ran up her left leg, stopping inches above her knee. On the right side of her head, a whalebone comb pulled her wavy hair behind her ear, showcasing the blinding aquamarine studs in her lobes. A platinum chain held up a porcelain locket that fell into the crevice between her breasts, where on the front, a blue rose provided decoration. Though the pearls would have been undoubtedly lovelier, this would work. And the sentimental value made up for what it lacked in presentation. What was inside…well, that was left to be discovered. Her heels matched the darkest shades of blue towards the top of the dress, with lace straps running up her calves.

She twirled in front of the mirror, the skirts whirling out in a ring about her small frame, and smiled. Yes, she would be the most stunning girl in the room (though it didn't feed her ego…too much), and it would be a lovely evening, assuming her mother didn't pick any fights—she wasn't in the mood, and wasn't sure she could keep herself from fighting back.

She took a quick glance out the window as she exited. The court was built within the confines of the Neptunian landscape; a floating city, encased in an icy dome meant to protect against invasion. Fortunately, Poseidon had cast a spell to keep the buildings from careening into one another, but hadn't thought of casting one to keep them in a stationary space. The geography was constantly in motion, as water was no stable substance, and getting around could prove to be difficult, if one didn't pay attention to the tides. Poseidon, a generally easygoing man, just had a hearty laugh at his people's innocent confusion. And Oceania, a woman always concerned with surfaces, was more than pleased to see her kingdom's surface be a fluid one. Larissa just thought it was a pain in the ass.

From here, though, she could see the elaborate fountain protruding from the castle's front staircase into the seas; it was a gift from Cronos, Pluto's current king, when he and Poseidon formed a treaty some years ago. It was, too, Larissa's favorite place in the entire kingdom. The Neptunian kingdom was a sleepy one, and tended to fall to slumber early in the evening, but Larissa was a night owl and would often sneak out, once the kingdom had fallen quiet, to dip her feet into the cool water of the fountain—pristine and clear unlike the murky, questionable waters of the sea on which they were stationed. She would go there this evening, she decided, as she pulled shut the door. Yes, she needed a good clearing of the head.

* * *

"Where have you been?" her mother pulled her aside and demanded. "Guests have been arriving for well over an hour and I told you this morning to wait at the door for them." Her usually tight lips seemed stretched even thinner, and her ice blue eyes froze Larissa's resolve. Well, for a moment anyway. 

"I was taking a walk, mother," she replied coolly, yanking her wrist back with a glare, "And I refuse to be some doll for these nasty old men to undress on their way in."

"Your dress would certainly invite that, wouldn't it?" her mother sneered, glancing at Larissa's cleavage and thigh. "For such a stubborn girl, you certainly conform to the ideas you pretend to rebel against. Now go sit down before I—"

"What? What will you do, with all these guests only a few yards away? You would never dare. It would stain the veil you're trying to pull over their eyes, and then what would you do?" She turned and strode to her place at the table without a look back, but could feel her mother's white cold anger seething and burning into the back of her head as she sat.

"Sorry," she apologized, faux sincerity washing smoothly over her voice. "I was a bit…delayed." If nothing else, she had learned from her mother a certain expertise at putting up facades.

"Probably busy trying to make that outfit more revealing," Despina whispered to her friends across the table, "Not that it would be easy."

Larissa smiled sweetly, and turned to talk to one of the visitors from Uranus—one of the sisters, for both parents were dead or gone now, and a council was running the government for the time being. Small talk.

"She looks like such a whore," she heard in the background, "But I guess she should play up her strong points." Laughter.

Despina's compatriots were as ugly as she was—both outside and within—and made sure everyone else knew it. Larissa hated court gatherings for just that reason—they worked to make everyone around them miserable whenever they clustered, and worked the hardest on doing so to Larissa. It was a sad time when even within her own family Larissa felt the need to play this stupid popularity contest. Her other sisters weren't as shallow or as scheming, but nor was she the best of friends with any of them. There was too much jealousy running through a family where vanity and appearance were given the utmost importance.

Galatea and Naiad were older, Galatea old enough to be out of the main quarters of the household. She was to be wed soon, and Despina hated her for it. Naiad was only a year older than Larissa, and the rivalry was a subdued one, primarily because Naiad was too timid a girl to attempt much in the way of competition. Thalassa was only nine, but she was already well versed in the ways of their mother. For the time being, though, she too was no real nemesis. Despina claimed that despicable role for herself.

"So Larissa," Despina began, "what's in that locket you've got around your neck?" Despina knew—not what was inside—but that it was private. She knew, too, that raising the question in front of an audience would pique the interests of those in hearing range and would obligate Larissa to be civil to them. Mother might even force Larissa to show them, in order to keep up the appearance that they were a family without secrets.

"Yes, do tell," another one of the vermin chimed in.

"I'd rather not say," she replied demurely, lowering her eyes.

"But now you've left us all curious," Ariel, a daughter of Uranus, interrupted.

"No, really, it's a…private memento of mine."

"Oh come now, Larissa," Despina smirked. "We don't have any secrets we can't share with our guests, right?"

Her mother narrowed her eyes dangerously in her direction.

A low voice sounded in her left ear. "Faint."

She turned to face a striking and decidedly androgynous young man sitting next to her. "What?" she asked, confused and blushing suddenly under the calm stare of this handsome creature.

"Faint. Just follow my lead," he smiled reassuringly.

This didn't lessen her confusion, but he sounded confident enough for her to play along. She dramatically threw a hand up to her forehead and fell to the right, where the mystery man caught hold of her and picked her up. A few of their guests had stood, shocked enough to make a gesture but not enough to help. Feeling the support of the stranger's arms beneath her, she let herself completely go—let herself go limp—to prove this play more convincing. She wasn't sure what he had in mind, but those eyes…those eyes seemed like they knew exactly what they were doing, and Larissa needed someone in her life who knew that.

"I'll take her out on the balcony for some air. She was probably just a bit overwhelmed." He flashed an assured grin, she saw through carefully squinted eyes.

Poseidon stood tentatively, a look of concern plastered on his face, but a nonchalant tone in his voice. "Do you need help?" She loved her father, but his uncaring disposition at this point in the evening was as clear as the reflections that drifted on the waters of the fountain outside. He loved his daughter, but his priorities were very rigid; politics first, relationships later.

Eyes closed, she felt him turn and walk carefully over to the corridor, down it, and out onto the empty balcony. Cool night air brushed her face, and she opened her eyes as he set her daintily down onto her feet.

"What was that for?" she smiled, adjusting her dress and her hair under his quiet gaze.

"Well, you didn't have to answer any more probing questions, did you?"

She turned away, concealing the heavy blush that rose up her neck and stained her usually milk-white complexion. "Guess so."

"I'm Andy."

Larissa turned back to her newfound hero. "Well, thank you Andy. It could have gotten very awkward, very fast in there without you."

She took a look at this beautiful stranger. Tall. At least six feet; that was an attractive asset in her book. Piercing blue eyes framed a strong Roman nose; choppy, sandy blond hair coming down to just over a strong jaw line, which lay just above a pair of broad shoulders. His navy blue pinstripe suit was loose around the chest, but fitted about his narrow hips and flared out beyond his thighs. She wasn't entirely sure, but she was already imagining a very toned, slender body hidden underneath his clothes. She wouldn't mind finding out for certain, she thought with a naughty smirk.

She blushed for the third time in his presence.

"Do you do that often?"

"What?"

"Blush. It's becoming, but I'm just not sure what about me would incite such a reaction." He brushed the loose hairs covering her eyes. "I'm flattered."

"So who are you?"

"I told you. Andy, of Uranus. And you're Larissa, one of the daughters of Neptune."

"How did you—"

"Well, you're one of the hostesses of the Neptunian party, and I got your name from your kid sister." A flash of teeth and she was ready to swoon all over again.

"Thalassa."

"Yeah, she's cute." Andy took a fairly innocent look up and down. "Not as cute as you. But anway, I'm clever. I figure things out."

"So you do."

"And I wanted to figure you out." He nervously shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers. Now it was his turn to blush.

"You do that often, Andy?"

"What?"

"Blush," she whispered, inching closer. Her breath was coming faster, and her heartbeat had started dancing to a quicker tempo.

His began moving in rhythm with hers.

Breathlessly, he murmured a quick, "No," and pulled her to him, his shirt falling open in the wake of their carelessness. Larissa looked down to find a certain anatomical oddity heaving with the quick breaths she had incited. She pulled away.

"You're a girl?" she demanded, confusion once more claiming her. She quickly adjusted her dress.

Andy looked down. "I thought you knew." She quickly fastened the criminal buttons.

"Well, you certainly don't go out of your way to clarify," Larissa replied coldly.

"Why should I have to?" Andy replied, "I know you felt what I just felt. Why does it matter that I don't fit whatever image you formed? There was an energy between us—that kind of thing transcends these surfaces."

Larissa sighed and turned away. "Don't get all metaphysical on me. We just met. And I have no idea what you're talking about. Besides, who names a girl child Andy?" She walked off, leaving Andy pale and dizzy and alone.

"It's short for Miranda," she muttered. But Larissa was inside by that time and rejoining the ranks of the narcissistic socialites her parents had filled the palace with.

From a window on the floor above, Despina smiled and let the curtains she had been hiding behind fall shut.

* * *

**Up Next in _Golden Sky, Silver Sea: _**Shaky peace grows ever shakier, the Keeper of Time, and a meeting of destinies. 


End file.
